Smart Car Coming to the U.S.

The New York Times reported today that DaimlerChrysler is planning on introducing the Smart car to the U.S. market starting in 2008.

“The German-American carmaker is calculating that with stubbornly high gasoline prices, mounting concerns about global warming, and waning interest in sport-utility vehicles, consumers in the United States will welcome a car that is no larger than a good-sized riding mower.”

The car is going to be marketed to drivers in overcrowded cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. The model that’s going to be hitting the streets is called the “Fortwo” a two-seater that fits on top of a regulation pool table and advertised in Britain as getting approximately 46 miles to the gallon in the city and 69 miles to the gallon on the highway. I’d certainly rather see these cars buzzing around the city on my daily commute rather than the monsterous Hummer, Hummer Jr. , and their counterparts.

Don’t tell anybody you don’t own f%*king Blonde on Blonde. It’s gonna be okay

I purchased a friend of mine the Decemberists Picturesque double LP for Christmas and even though I don’t particularly care for the Decemberists, I wanted the album for myself. It just felt really good having something in my hands. The packaging, the booklet, the extra songs on the album. It’s something that we’re all losing out on in this digital age of ours. You can’t compare tearing open a new LP, putting it on, and sitting down and reading the liner notes to downloading an album from iTunes. The sound quality is much warmer than digital too and there’s something about the record hiss that appeals to me.

I’ve been contemplating about going vinyl for some time now and finally decided that it’s time. I’m starting my own vinyl collection. I just need some help. I’m basically clueless about record players or “turntables” and didn’t even know what a stylus was until I looked it up on Wikipedia. I know… it’s sad and embarrassing. Can you blame me? I grew up in the age of mixtapes and CDs! Not a good enough excuse is it? So, I know there are some of you out there that know a lot more about stereo equipment than I do. So how about a few suggestions on getting started with a record player? Not super expensive though, just something I can use in my apartment to play records. I was thinking about getting this one. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Bigger than Beaker’s….

I swore I wouldn’t write about it, but Christian (aka Beaker) made me do it.

Mobiblu DAH 1500-i, the world’s smallest mp3 player, now available at Walmart.

Smaller than Neal’s….

Apple has just introduced the lastest mp3-fetish-gadget: iPod Nano. Here’s the deal:

– 1,000 songs for $200
– color screen
– 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inches
– 14-hour battery
– syncs with Outlook

Boom. Oh, and they updated iTunes to version 5.0. Looks tight.

Pandora | Discover Music that You Like

Pandora is a music discovery service designed to help you find and enjoy music that you’ll love. It’s powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Just tell the program one of your favorite songs or artists and it will launch a streaming station to explore that part of the music universe.

The program also lets the user give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” for any song played so it can be tailored to personal tastes. I tried it out with some of my favorite bands including Slowdive, and it played songs by Doves, Lush, and Curve, all bands that I really like. I typed in Joy Division and Pandora played New Order and Lali Puna. Pretty impressive. It is a very useful tool that allows the user to discover music that they may not have found on their own.

Check it out, there’s a free 10 hour trial, after that it’s $36 per year.

Could Google be the next Microsoft?

That seems to the be the question on the New York Times’ lips today, as Google has launched two major software ventures this week:

* Google Talk, an instant-message and online-telephony (think: Skype-killer) client linked to your Gmail account, and

* Google Desktop 2, the newest release version of Google’s desktop and global information finder/organizer (think: Spotlight-killer)

Time will tell whether Google suceeds in their never-stated-but-surely-intended goal of making Microsoft’s Windows and other operating systems obsolete, but with $4 billion in capital soon-to-be-available and such runaway successes as Google Maps and Google Earth (among countless others) the writing sure seems to be on the wall:

There’s a new 800-lb gorilla in the room. And he wants you to play nice.

So you don’t get lost in your music

(via the G-Train)

Very cool: iPod Subway Maps.